Monday, November 26, 2007

Yeah, hey, it's Garrett, Garrett from the future. Yeah, it's Wednesday but I think it's Tuesday for you. I dont't know though because in the future, we don't use calendars. The future is pretty cool though but honestly I was kind of hoping for more flying cars.

I'm Hungary for money ... ha, get it?

We arived in Vienna, Austria Sunday morning after a 10 hour train ride from Florence, Italy. As expected, the money grubbing nickel-and-diming assholes wanted a collective € 75 from us to sercure a sleeping berth. We decided to forego the bearth and instead brave our chances in a shared 6 person seating quarter. When we boarded the train, inluding Colette and I, there were 4 people. Luckily one of them left so we each had 2 seats per person which is really convient because staring at the person across from you, whom you don't know, can get horribly akward. The most annoying part about not sleeping in a berth is that we were asked for our tickets at varying hours of the evening. You are almost asleep and somehow forcefuly slides the door open, turns the light on and says "tickets" or "passports" in a stern manner. The vocal force of the ticket collecting man can be liken to that of something between a pissed of high school principal and the gestapo.

Upon arrival, we boarded a tram and made our way towards our hosts for the next 2 days. When we arrived, we were buzzed into the hotel room and met with Isa, our host. There were 2 fellow surfers sleeping on the floor of a studio flat. For those of you keeping track at home that amounts to Isa, her boyfriend, 2 other couchsurfers and Colette and I. Yeah, 6 people, 1 room. Colette and I dropped off our bags and went out for coffee to kill some time since it was 10 a.m, and still, no one was stirring at the residence.

We walked around the city for 20 minutes, just long enough to be substantially chilled by the harsh Austrian winds, and then wandered into a Starbucks much to my displeasure. We were looking for something to do or see for the day but the sheer absence of life on the streets on this Sunday morning had us much discourage.

We began flipping through our Eurail book to see if there were any short trips we could embark on. You see, if you use a pass for an overnight train that departs after 7 p.m then you can still use the train the next day without losing a day. A couple of places in Poland were mentioned but that deemed to be too far. Finally, someone mentioned Budapest. It was only 3 hours away and the train was leaving in 50 minutes. Now there are several saying in which I am pretty sure I will never utter in my life. "Do you have this in fuscia?" "Does that cable package include Lifetime?" not to be outdone by "I´m really glad I got my scrotum pierced." "Fuck it, lets go to Budapest" was on that list until yesterday. Colette finished her grande latte frapacinno and I imbibed the last of my hot coco and we were off to the train station ... to go to Budapest.

On the train, we discovered that neither of us knew a whole lot about Budapest. I thought Budapest was in or around Turkey, and that we could potentially visit my friend Erin. Sadly, I discovered that Turkey was several days train ride from Austria! We weren't sure if they accepted Euros, for future reference they don't. They have their own currency which is quite lovely to the eye. We weren't sure of Hungarys native tongue. That one we never figured out.

We got off the train, exchanged some money and went out sightseeing for 4 hours. This is what we saw.

Four Seasons Resort, Budapest

View from empty first class cabin. Since I am too old to buy a 2nd class ticket, Colette and I had to get 1st class ones. We definetly don't look first class with out big packbacks and tathered clothes spinkeled amongst the laptop laden bussiness folk. For those of you curious, I'm up 18 games to 14 on our trip-to-date cribbage games.